Thursday, August 25, 2005

Pistons shop at the bargain bin

The Pistons signed Maurice Evans yesterday. I remember watching Evans for the first time last season when the Pistons got slaughtered at Sacramento. I was very impressed. For anyone who doesn't remember that particular game, it was the first Kings home game after the Chris Webber trade. The Kings dominated the Pistons in every facet of the game. Kenny Thomas turned in to Hakeem Olajuwon for 48 minutes. Brian Skinner did his best Bernard King impersonation. In fact, the whole Kings teamed looked like the '90 UNLV team. The Kings shot 50% from the field, 55% from three-point land, and 92% from the free throw line. They did this without Brad Miller and Cuttino Mobley who were DNP's.

As amazing as Thomas and Skinner were in that game, I was most impressed by Maurice Evans. He had 12 points and nine boards playing shooting guard. He followed the Pistons game with a 14 rebound effort against Memphis. Did I mention he was a shooting guard? Cuttino Mobley came back the next game and Evans was pretty much relegated to mop-up duty. Don't let his statistics fool you. Judging from his averages, it looks like we're getting the reincarnation of Fennis Dembo but that's just an allusion. His per 48 minute averages are surprisingly high. His game averages were six points and three rebounds. However, his per 48 minutes stats are a whopping 16 points and eight rebounds along with 1.5 steals. I didn't think there was anyone outside of Michael Finley that would make me happy but I was wrong. Joe-D stole this guy. Trust me.

The Pistons won't be signing anyone else since they were going to have minutes-issues even before signing Evans. The Pistons needed to upgrade their bench scoring to help numb the soul-crushing offensive droughts that cost them the NBA title. As much as I like Maurice Evans, he's not the bench scorer that the Pistons needed. However, the key master for offensive fertility might very well be Flip Saunders. Most NBA teams don't have prolific bench scorers. It's a myth that the problem lies within the roster. LB proved two things while he was in Detroit. 1). He could win an NBA championship and 2). His offensive coaching skills were somewhere between Nick Anderson's clutch free throw shooting and Frederick Weiss' post game. Basically I'm saying that despite not adding a proven scorer, I think the Pistons will be better on offense.